As an Estonian child, living in Sweden as a refugee with her family, Canada represented her new beginning, where she started to paint landscapes. Enda Bardell loves nature and she loves doing art, sharing what she feels, creating something special.
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Enda Bardell was born in Estonia and, with her family, had lived as a refugee in Sweden. When Stalin demanded the return of the refugees, Sweden was no longer safe and Enda’s family decided to move to Canada. After a year in Winnipeg, they moved to Vancouver, where she currently lives. That new land represented a new beginning for Enda and her family, where they started to create a new safe life.
Enda started to do art at 8 years old. Since Swedish children could not play with Estonian children, because they were refugees, Enda started to design and make back to front fashions for paper dolls to give to other girls in school, in hopes of winning friends, influencing people and being accepted. Hence, she has always felt the necessity to pursue art, also as a way of sharing.
Later, in Canada, where Enda and her family lived near the Pacific Ocean, far from the turmoil, and immersed in nature, Enda started to paint landscapes in oil, followed by hard-edge abstract in acrylics. Currently, she works with acrylics and watercolors, which are her two preferred techniques: while acrylics require precision and rigor, watercolors are difficult to control.
She loves to paint with watercolors, because she has to be fast, paintings “fast and furious”. Her watercolors works are about the feeling of having been to that particular place, recapturing that experience and rekindling that special memory. Above all, she likes to create intriguing art and create curiosity in people who admire and observe her paintings.
Her style is conceptual and non-objective. Everything she creates, appears in her mind casually, as the colors, the shapes, the pattern. And she needs to start working immediately, when something comes to her mind. She loves painting en plein air, feeling the freedom of the fresh air, hearing the sound of the ocean, and giving a personification to trees, which are similar to people, according to the artist. However, she also likes to paint the freighters, as water is one of her favourite subjects.
For Enda Bardell art means everything, as it is part of her life and a way to express herself and share her feelings and abilities. For Enda, art has a strong connection with her childhood in Sweden, because for her art means being accepted, being recognized, feeling confident, important and valued. Thanks to her determination and perseverance, she became an award-winning artist, who has shown in over 30 exhibitions and hundreds of groups shows, locally and internationally. Her works have been placed in corporate and private collections worldwide.
Cover image: Enda Bardell. Pooling, Point Grey Foreshore. Courtesy of Art Works Gallery
Written by Kooness
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